Sunday, September 27, 2015

Many typical garden flowers are from Europe, grown by Europeans for hundreds of years. Examples of these are bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanusalso called cornflower), daffodils (Narcissus many species), and pinks and carnations (Dianthus many species). And violets. Violets are native all across the world, but the cultivated ones are almost all European. That includes pansies (Viola tricolor) johnny-jump-ups (Viola cornuta), the sweet violet (Viola odorata) and others.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

In early September I took a tour of Philadelphia featuring gardens (Road Scholar link). Here is a look at Ladew Topiary Garden.

Henry Ladew (1887-1976) loved fox hunting and managed to fox hunt in the United States and England every year for decades. He purchased a home in Monkton, Maryland in 1929 and spent fifty years arranging things. He was very influenced by gardens he saw in England. My pictures feature the topiary, but the garden also has "rooms" where all the flowers are iris, or white or pink, really fun to see. (And, as with any garden, different seasons can be dramatically different.)

The signature topiary, a fox hunt. My photo only captures part of it: there is a second rider. (I don't have a closer picture: the fox, dogs, rider and fence are all shaped plants.)

Saffi commented on 9/11/15 "Lovely post with clear instructions and great pictures. Can I ask how the silk is one year on? Has the colour faded or changed at all? "
I located the silk pieces from that project. Below first, are the pieces photographed dry, from top to bottom they are alkaline, neutral and acid. The rug underneath is beige.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Tomatoes are everyday foods in the United States. In fact, we often count on them to complete a salad. Years ago, on a business flight, I sat next to a vegetable-broker who told me had made a tidy profit on tomatoes one year when the supplies were limited. He explained that "a salad has to have tomato." Since Americans feel a salad must have a slice of tomato, restaurants will pay whatever it costs for tomatoes. With most vegetables, when the price gets high, they substitute or do without. Knowing that, he was careful to buy tomatoes when a shortage was predicted and happily rode the bidding war that followed.

I do not think it is quite that simple today. Restaurants have created salad options that let them omit tomatoes if they aren't affordable, but it emphasizes the stature of tomatoes in the American diet.